In the present field of household cleaning appliances, floor mop is increasingly and broadly welcome by urban users thanks to its feature of aesthetic appearance. At present, floor mop in the market is usually composed of a supporting plate, a supporting arm pivotably secured to the center of the supporting plate, and a mop cloth clamped on both sides of the supporting plate. The mop cloth is mounted to the bottom portion of the mop supporting plate by means of a variety of attachment mechanisms, such as nylon hook-and-loop fastener, snap fastener etc., and the supporting arm is connected to the top portion of the supporting plate. Since floor mop has advantages of large cleaning area, high cleaning efficiency and convenience to disassemble mop cloth for washing, it is an appropriate substitution in place of conventional mop.
However, in application of the floor mop described above there are many problems, in which the most prominent one is arisen from the fact that the floor mop has only one cleaning surface, and the material used for mop cloth must meet various environments in design, hence selection of material is limited. For example, stubborn stains and smudges on floor can hardly be removed if the mop cloth contains a conventional cleaning material. However, if the mop cloth contains an abrasive material capable of grinding away stains, the remaining part of floor without stains may be scraped and harmed. Therefore, a conventional floor mop cannot be used for cleaning of ordinary floor and at same time for floor with stubborn stains.
Moreover, a conventional floor mop further has the following drawbacks:
(1) Since the supporting plate is rather large in area, the intensity of pressure on floor is relatively small. The force exerted by user during usage can not be transmitted to the floor effectively;
(2) Since the supporting plate is rather large in dimension, it is difficult to enter into narrow and ambiguous space for cleaning said space;
(3) The attachment mechanism for mop cloth is not sufficiently convenient and reliable.
There were many inventions attempted to solve aforementioned problems, for example, European patent EP1810662, whose publication date is Oct. 14, 2004, has disclosed a floor mop with both surfaces applicable for cleaning. The supporting plate of said mop is secured by means of magnetic attraction, and further includes a rotary attachment mechanism, consisted of a permanent magnet for fixing and holding the mop cloth, and a hinge joint for applying any one of mop cloths secured on either surface of supporting plate. During the cleaning work, the user can make use of the mop cloth made of different cleaning materials on its both sides and fixed on the supporting plate by reversing the supporting plate.
In addition, U.S. Pat. No. 4,114,223A, whose publication date is Sep. 19, 1978, Chinese patent CN2549888Y, whose publication date is May 14, 2003, and CN2678552Y, whose publication date is Feb. 16, 2005, have also disclosed a floor mop with a rotary supporting plate structure. The common features of the above solutions are as follows: The both sides of the base plate are able to come into contact with and clean the ground. The shift of the two cleaning surfaces is accomplished by reversing the base plate. However, this type of design has drawbacks of complex mechanism, uneasy shift of the two cleaning surfaces, unsecured joint between the mop cloth and the base, etc. Moreover, since the two cleaning surfaces are disposed on both sides of one base plate, their surface areas are the same, resulting in a relatively small cleaning intensity of pressure. Furthermore, the above solutions can not resolve the problem for cleaning a narrow space due to the large dimension of the base plate.
Moreover, U.S. Pat. No. 6,591,442B2, whose publication date is Jul. 15, 2003, has disclosed a floor mop base capable to be turned around. The lower layer of the mop base is made of a water-absorbent material, and the upper layer is made of plastics or other similar materials. The mop base has a configuration capable to be turned up to 90 degrees. Such configuration makes the mop base accommodate floor surfaces having different shapes for cleaning work. The mop cloth is secured on the mop base in a conventional manner. There are four holes for fixation of cloth on both sides of the upper portion of the mop base. The mop cloth is wrapped on the base and then the edges of cloth are inserted into the holes for fixation. This solution has provided two cleaning surfaces. The non-reversible main cleaning surface can accomplish the conventional floor cleaning work, while the reversible sub cleaning surface can form an angle of 90 degrees with respect to the main cleaning surface. When cleaning the edge portions, the user can clean the ground and the wall corner at the same time. However, in the above solution, only the non-reversible main cleaning surface is adopted to effectively clean the ground, the reversible sub-cleaning surface can not take effect unless the edge portions, such as the ground and the wall corner, are needed being cleaned. Therefore, the eventual effect is only to eliminate the dead areas during the cleaning operation, not to integrate different cleaning abilities.
International patent WO0243555A1, whose publication date is Jun. 6, 2002, has disclosed a cleaning device having an adhesive surface and a clean cloth surface. The main cleaning surface is incorporated with a conventional cleaning material, and the adhesive surface can wipe off some large-size particles, such as, dust and sand, etc. The shift of the two cleaning surfaces is accomplished by the stopper disposed on the cleaning device. When the angle between the supporting arm and the cleaning device is larger than a predetermined angle, the adhesive surface will come into contact with the ground due to principle of lever. However, when the adhesive surface comes into contact with the ground, the force applied by the user can not be transmitted to the positions to be cleaned effectively, that is, the cleaning work depends on the adhesive function of the sub cleaning surface. Therefore, in the above solution, the adhesive surface is only a supplement of the functions of the main cleaning surface, the material and functions of the sub cleaning surface will be limited.
Summing up, although the floor mop disclosed in the above referenced patents can be used at the same time for ordinary floor cleaning and for cleaning off stubborn stains, as well as for cleaning of ambiguous floor space having different shapes through reversing the edge structures, it still cannot overcome all the abovementioned drawbacks.
What is needed urgently at present is a cleaning device which has a simple structure and different cleaning abilities so that the user can shift the different cleaning abilities easily.